May 31, 2017

New in Spring 2017! The Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA) is pleased to announce its new journal, Antisemitism Studies. A double blind peer-reviewed academic publication, issued twice a year, Antisemitism Studies provides the leading forum for scholarship on the millennial phenomenon of antisemitism, both its past and present manifestations. Multidisciplinary and international in scope, the journal will publish a variety of perspectives on, and interpretations of, the problem of antisemitism and its impact on society.

Each issue is composed of a brief introduction by the editor, a selection of scholarly articles, and reviews of significant new books published on the subject.

Antisemitism Studies welcomes the submission of manuscripts that contribute to the scholarly study of antisemitism. Authors may work from any disciplinary perspective, address any cultural, national, or religious context, and study any period of history, including the present.

“Which questions moral philosophers choose to study—and
choose not to study—is itself a moral issue,” wrote Virginia Warren in her
groundbreaking 1979 article. Indeed, bioethics
has often focused on important, but relatively narrow issues based on the
assumption that health is a natural lottery, and that the chief moral questions
have to do with the quality of care, and fair access to it, or with the
implications of new technologies to treat or cure, and questions about
reproduction and death. Of course, some writing has always acknowledged many influences
on health and thus longevity, encouraged, no doubt, by scholarship in
epidemiology, the social determinants of health, interest in food/agriculture
issues, and concern about occupational and environmental pollution. This
special issue of IJFAB aims to examine, through a feminist lens, human
activities such as fracking that, by negatively impacting the environment,
threaten health.

Science fiction, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, abounds with post-apocalyptic nightmares,
but rarely devotes any attention to how they came about or whether they could
have been prevented.

Yet, as ever more
paths to environmental disaster are opened up by corporate and governmental
decisions, the preventable is being touted as inevitable, natural, and good. Many
of us now live in disbelief at the deliberate dismantling of the conditions
required for human (and nonhuman) flourishing by people apparently oblivious or
disdainful of the consequences. If these forces continue to prevail, it is only
a matter of time before the consequences of widespread lack of access to clean
water, air and land pollution, desertification, and deforestation, will
drastically reduce human life spans, and quite possibly lead to human
extinction. The process will exacerbate the fight for survival at all levels,
from the individual to the national.

We encourage readers to think about the many ways human
activities are putting at risk human health, shortening lives, and risking species
suicide.

Our main goal is to evaluate the health consequences of
activities intended to maintain and expand dependence on fossil fuels, and
technology in general, especially that held to be necessary for sustaining
rapidly growing populations, no matter at what cost to the environment. These goals,
in turn, reflect the needs and interests of continued western hegemony. We
encourage potential contributors to contact us for a more detailed description of
possible topics. In addition, we hope for submissions on the many related
topics not listed here, such as mountain top removal, tar sands development, or
as yet unidentified threats.

Contributions are requested for the Kirwan Institute/Office of Diversity and Inclusion journal, Race and Ethnicity. The objective of the journal is to bridge the divide between voices from the academy and practice. The journal therefore contains work that adheres to the experience and traditions of academia, as well as those which illustrate the priorities and experiences of activists. We welcome all contributions which fit into either one of these categories, as well as work that bridges them.

Guest Editor Iyiola Solanke, Associate Professor at Leeds University Law School in England, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity invite submissions for the first issue of its sixth volume, entitled “Racism, Colonialism and Law.”

The focus of this issue revolves around the ideas of racism, colonialism and law, considered together. We ask contributors to consider how ideas and practices associated with racism, colonialism and the law either help to reveal or unhelpfully obscure the social experience of marginalized groups. We also welcome reflections on the importance of critical social and legal interventions as responses to those everyday needs and realities that fall through the cracks.

We welcome contributions that engage questions such as the following:

1. What are the obstacles and opportunities for critical reflections on racism, colonialism, and law? Have blind spots emerged historically which are re-produced by concepts and categories used in debate and discussion? How does this affect the ability to identify contemporary occurrences of racial subordination and develop adequate political and legal responses?

2. What is gained or lost through the development of “universal” international legal frameworks and their application to peoples and groups with very particular histories and lives affected by racism, colonialism and law?

3. How does the legacy of colonialism and racism appear in current rules, laws and practices in everyday domains such as health, education, immigrant and refugee rights, employment, or other arenas? What major changes in legal doctrine and practice would authors welcome and why?

4. As an activist and practitioner working at the intersection of these issues, what have you been your experiences advocating for/initiating change (legal, community, etc.) at the intersections of issues of race, colonialism and law as defined in your locale?

Of course, this list is not meant to be exhaustive. We welcome contributions that use these ideas as a point of departure as well as those which offer new insights not addressed here.

Though referring to a specific geographic space, the word “Appalachia” often conjures a set of stereotypes stemming from the notion that Appalachia is an isolated and homogenous region when in fact international migrations and markets have been true presences for more than 100 years.

We invite proposals from scholars, activists/practitioners, and creative non-fiction/fiction writers who consider a host of issues evoked by “Appalachia.”

We invite papers that consider the following questions.

What are the political and ideological implications of the gap between the demographic realities of Appalachia and outsiders’ perceptions of those same demographics? Do these perceptions have an impact on policymaking decisions that affect the region, including resource allocation?

If misinformation and misperceptions about Appalachia have real consequences in terms of policy and resource allocation, in what ways are activists/practitioners working to counter these consequences? In other words, what does it mean to do activist/practitioner work “on the ground” in Appalachia?

As the touchstone of many of the “white poverty” stories we tell ourselves, it’s important to consider the particular metaphorical space Appalachia occupies within these stories. If the realities that potentially call these narratives into question were more widely known and appreciated, then what? What lessons about race, culture, and class should we be drawing from the stories we tell ourselves about the Appalachian experience?

The plight of Appalachia's natural resources defines Appalachian studies and politics. That is, national and international companies routinely create a boom and bust cycle in the region to the extreme detriment of the land, culture and political influence of the area. How do these cycles influence cultural and political realities? What kinds of interventions by activists and practitioners do the misuses of natural resources demand? In what ways does the notion of Appalachia as a region of great natural beauty often repress dialogues about the misuse of Appalachia’s natural resources?

How are concerns of race/ethnicity implicated in geographical circumstances?

January 26, 2011

There is little doubt that from its origins in the 16th century through its end in the 19th century the transatlantic slave trade dramatically shaped the trajectories of many millions of lives on at least four continents (Africa, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and South America). Whether, in what forms, by what means, and to what effect the slave trade continues to leave social, cultural, institutional, familial and personal impressions in the present day are matters of considerable debate and even tension – in the former slave-trading and slave-hosting nations, in West and Central Africa, but also in countries whose involvement was less obvious.

Guest editor David Anderson Hooker, Director of Research and Training for Coming to the Table: Taking America (USA) Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, invite submissions for the first issue of its fifth volume, entitled “500 Years Later: Reverberations of the Translatlantic Slave Trade.”

The Transatlantic Slave Trade most immediately touched societies and lives in France, Great Britain, Portugal and Brazil, the Netherlands, North America, the Caribbean, West Africa and Central Africa. We especially welcome analyses, critiques, reflections, and documentation by activists, community-based organizations, and others living and working in these countries and regions or working on issues that implicate developments and dynamics in these places. Of course, the work of scholars, advocates, activists and practitioners in all disciplines working elsewhere are also welcome.

Topics of inquiry can include but are not limited to:

In what ways do the effects of the Transatlantic Slave Trade continue to ripple through the lives of particular people, institutions, communities, and societies? With what impact? How do we know?

What narratives prevail about the linkages between the slave trade and its historical impacts, on one hand, and contemporary racial meanings and conditions, on the other?

How pronounced are calls for racial “healing” and reconciliation? What are their sources? What efforts have been tried and with what success? Failures?

Do reparations movements do more good or more harm – under what circumstances and in what respects? What are the potential dangers and pitfalls of demands for reparations for the descendants of slaves? What would a truly beneficial approach to reparations look like?

How has the slave trade shaped contemporary notions of “whiteness” and “blackness,” whether locally or globally? What effect does it continue to exert on other identities? What reparative work is needed, if any, to fashion more constructive concepts of racial identity and meaning? Or are we at a point in time where notions of race no longer serve a beneficial effect; and, if so, what, if anything would “replace race”?

What current efforts seek to link the descendants of former slaves, slave traders, and slave holders? What are their aims, mechanisms, and outcomes?

What current efforts seek to link former countries and regions that participated most actively in the slave trade? What are their aims, mechanisms, and outcomes?

December 01, 2009

The theme of issue no. 21 of Nashim (Spring 2011), under the consulting editorship of David Golinkin of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, will be “Women in the Responsa Literature.”

The responsa literature -- compilations of legal opinions written by rabbis and rabbinic judges in response to specific queries or cases -- is one of the largest branches, if not the largest branch of Jewish literature. Indeed, a new bibliography (Shmuel Glick, Kuntress hateshuvot hehadash, I--III, Jerusalem, 2006–2009) lists over 4,400 books or series containing responsa. The responsa are a fount of information about Jewish women on a host of topics, such as marriage, divorce, agunot (women who remain “chained” to missing, disabled or separated husbands in the absence of a religious divorce), widows, child-rearing, and women in business, starting from about 500 CE and continuing right up to the present day. This vast literature was utilized for research on women’s lives in studies by Israel Abrahams (Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, London, 1896) and, more recently, by Avraham Grossman (Rebellious and Pious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, Lebanon, NH, 2004) and Ruth Lamdan (A Separate People: Jewish Women in Palestine, Syria and Egypt in the Sixteenth Century, Leiden, 2000), but it is still only beginning to be tapped.

For this issue of Nashim, we invite submissions about women in the responsa literature, focusing on a broad topic, a specific geographical area or a specific set of responsa. How are women portrayed? What can we learn about their lives? How were they viewed by rabbis and by their societies? Can we hear their own voices in the testimony they gave before religious courts (batei din)? How did and do these rulings affect their lives? And how can we interpret all of this data using the tools of women’s and gender studies?

Proposals for submissions of up to 12,000 words, not previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, should be sent to Deborah Greniman, Managing Editor of Nashim, by February 1, 2010, by email (preferably) to nashim@schechter.ac.il; or by fax to +972-3-7256592. Final date for submission of articles: May 1, 2010.

All scholarly articles will be subject to peer review. Academic Editor of Nashim: Renée Levine Melammed. Nashim is published jointly by the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and Indiana University Press.

November 30, 2009

The Journal of Modern Literaturewelcomes articles on various aspects of modernism in 1911. What was “modern” in 1911? What was “modernism” before the name had been coined? This question includes literature, with possible essays on the young Joyce, Lawrence, Woolf, Pound, Stein, as well as less canonical writers for the field of modernism (for instance, can Maurice Maeterlinck, the recipient of the Nobel prize in 1911, be called a modernist?). We also welcome essays on culture, politics, architecture and the other arts.

Please submit essays via e-mail to laurelwgarver@gmail.com, following the Advice to Contributors in the most recent issue of jml, no later than June 1, 2010.

April 01, 2009

Black Camera is an international peer reviewed film journal devoted to the study of the black cinematic experience. Read this earlier blog post for more on this journal now at Indiana University Press.

The only scholarly journal of its kind in the United States, Black Camera features essays and interviews, film and book reviews, archival notes, reports and programmatic statements that engage film in social as well as political contexts and in relation to historical and economic forces that bear on the reception, distribution, and production of film in local, regional, national, and transnational settings and environments.

Black Camera's aims are to document, encourage, and invigorate research and study of black film-making as an art form, cultural and political practice, and historical activity; engage in conversation with other cinematic traditions, movements and practices in world cinema; stimulatenew, and refresh traditional, theoretical and analytical perspectives; disseminate research to enhance the teaching of black film; and serve as a depository and showcase for black artistic and intellectualachievement.

The editor invites submissions on:

Reconsideration of key black "classic" films

Black (and other related postcolonial and third world) programmatic statements and manifestos

The editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts invites submissions for the second issue of its second volume that will focus on “Race and Secondary Education: Content, Contexts, Impacts.” Race/Ethnicity uses a classic piece as a point of departure for treatments of critical issues within the field of race and ethnic studies.

While the classic piece establishes the thematic parameters of each issue, authors are under no obligation to actively engage the arguments posed by that work.

The second issue of Volume 2 explores the implication of race and ethnicity in systems of secondary education across the globe. The issue opens with an excerpt from Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire that underlines the distinction between oppressive and transformative forms of education. According to Freire, whereas oppressive forms of education discount the experiences and cultures of those being educated, transformative forms engage all participants in dialogue. The outcome of the struggle of developing countries and marginalized populations to participate in the transformation of their society depends on whether the educational environment is oppressive or transformative.

We focus this issue on secondary education, which provides many children with their final, formal education, and on the character and content of that education. In doing so, we recognize that formal learning environments must be considered within larger cultural, societal, national, and even global contexts to account for the content and impact of the educational experience. We welcome the insights of educators and other practitioners, as well as those of researchers, on the dynamics of teaching and learning both within and beyond the United States and the West.

Topics of inquiry may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Access: Who’s being left behind in the educational process; how and why? Equity: What are the biggest barriers to, and best practices for, achieving equal opportunity in education? Value: What are children learning about their place in society and the world, and how do those formal and informal lessons differ by race, ethnicity, gender, and class? Reform: What needs to happen?